ENGL 4384: Senior Seminar Student Anthology

ENGL 4384: Senior Seminar Student Anthology Fall 2016 Dr. Leah Haught, Professor Department of English & Philosophy Printed on campus by UWG Publications and Printing. Introduction 7 By Dr. Leah Haught 11 Kanye West: Hell of a Life 13 By Randy Anderson “You’re Still Good to Me, if You’re a Bad Kid, Baby” 30 By Paisley Burklow 45 There’s a Monster in My Pocket: The Allure and Fear of 47 Categorizing Others as “Monsters” By William Brown “Come See What’s Underneath”: Monstrous Interiority in 60 The Babadook By Kaleigh Ingram That’s Not Funny 73 By Morgan Luellen 89 The Danger of the Zombie in Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of 91 Hands and Teeth Trilogy through Gendered Groups and Social Performance By Courtney Arndt The War on Young Adult Literature: Monsters Fighting 105 Censorship By Erin Fugagli Strong Bones: Taking Back Her Narrative in Alice Sebold’s 119 The Lovely Bones By Leah Mirabella “The past is never dead”: Enduring Monstrosity in “A 132 Rose for Emily” By Abbie Smith Quit Clowning Around: An Analysis of The Killer Clown 146 Phenomenon By Taylor Smith Cyborgs and Consumerist Monstrosity in M.T. Anderson’s 161 Feed By Marla Williams 175 Humanity has a long history of defining itself through what it is not. The impulse to define “me” or “us” against an “other” has been dis- cussed by writers and thinkers as diverse as Aristotle, Plato, Jacques Lacan, Frantz Fanon, Julia Kristeva, Stephen King, and Octavia But- ler, among others. Moreover, the impulse seems to predate the human tradition of writing our thoughts down for posterity. Some of the best- preserved evidence we have from the Paleolithic Era, for example, is cave art that frequently depicts hybrid and humanoid figures, like the famous “Sorcerer” of the cave of Les Trois Freres, France, suggesting that interest in the distinction between human and non- human is as old as humanity itself. And one need only look at national bestseller lists, movie schedules, or news outlets to recognize both the power and the appeal of “monsters,” real as well as imagined, within con- temporary discourses on everything from entertainment and advertis- ing to science and politics. Taken together these observations speak to humans’ seemingly inherent need to categorize the world around us in a manner that makes sense of similar- ity and difference alike. “We” are an “us” (similar) because we are not Figure 1: "The Sorcerer" “them” (different); “they” are “others” (different) because they are not “us” (similar). The question then becomes, when do we privilege the similar over the different and vice versa? Pushing this logic further still, who is the “we” who gets to decide what these boundaries of normality or sameness are? What are the larger implications of identifying an individual or group of beings as different first and foremost? How many boundaries must be crossed before being “different” or “other” becomes synonymous with being “frightening,” “bad,” or “monstrous”? These are but a few of the complex questions our seminar grappled with throughout our semester together. Using the lens of a specific Senior Seminar, Fall 2016 7 monster, the reanimated corpse, we explored the extent to which “monster” is an adaptable, multifunctional concept. Who or what we fear might change, but how and why we project our fears outwards— the way we create our monsters—has remained remarkably similar throughout human history, for better or for worse. Individuals or species deemed genetic anomalies or developmentally disadvantaged were labeled monsters until relatively recently, for instance. While we have moved away from this particular pejorative identification, we still tend to associate “monsters” with abnormal or inhuman crea- tures, including those that belong to our own species. Alongside the biological connotations of the term, the concept of the monster has strong ties to theological, moral, and technological quandaries as well. In short, whenever we encounter an individual, a thing, or an action we cannot understand rationally or emotionally, a monster offers or, in some instances, threatens to rear its head. Hence a vampire can personify our attempts to make sense of variety of phenomena, from rabies, the plague, and HIV/AIDS, to sexuality/sexual desire, immi- gration, and abusive relationships. It should not be especially surpris- ing, therefore, that no matter how many monsters are explained away or exposed as fraud, there is always another waiting in the wings to move center stage, reveling in its ambivalent position as the embodi- ment of human fears and desires simultaneously. The essays in Monster (n.): Defining Monstrosity reflect their authors’ interest in the ways in which the rhetoric of monstrosity continues to evolve to express anxieties about a wide range of top- ics, including the limitations of humor specifically and entertainment more generally, the potential disadvantages of becoming over-reliant on technology or scientific advancements such as cloning, the relationships between women and the men—living as well as dead—in their lives, the influence of social and generational expectations on the mental and emotional health of individuals and communities alike, and the popular appeal of self-proclaimed monsters. The texts analyzed cover a variety of mediums and genres. Here you can read about the monsters of young adult fiction, short stories, novels, anime, graphic novels, movies, music, horror, southern gothic, comedy, dys- topian and crime fiction, and popular culture. Here you can find a bevy of insight into how our culture has recreated monsters to indicate our own aspirations and fears. Here, perhaps most importantly, you can learn more about what it means to be human, because understanding our monsters ultimately helps us understand ourselves. Warning: the 8 Senior Seminar, Fall 2016 act of being human is messy and frequently unsettling, but boy can you learn a lot about it if you are willing to confront those monsters we construct intentionally as well as unintentionally. So go ahead, turn the page if you dare, and be prepared to be blown away by the bravery, integrity, and intelligence of the analyses contained herein. Dr. Leah Haught December 2016 Introduction 9 Kanye West: Hell of a Life By Randy Anderson “I understand that you don’t like me but I need you to understand that I don’t care.” –Kanye West Kanye West is arguably one of the most polarizing pop culture figures of the last ten years. Even those who are not familiar with his body of work will almost certainly have opinions about Kanye West based solely on his public persona, much of which trends toward the negative. However, when his public actions between the years of 2007 and 2010 are examined alongside his works that were current within that time frame, paying special attention to the changes in performativity and lyrical content during that period, a new picture begins to form that may work to shed light on the words and actions of the enigmatic star. During those three years, Kanye made choices that altered the way he lived and the way he was perceived from then on. Each of those choices Kanye made lead him to shed a bit more of his humanity, beginning with his 2008 album 808’s and Heartbreak and continuing till we arrive at track six of his fourth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, entitled “Monster.” When the events of Kanye’s life between 2007 and 2010 are viewed through the lens of monstrosity, what emerges is a narrative of a man grap- pling with the loss of his own humanity, who is dealing with grief, loss, anger, and success, all at levels he was unprepared for, while completely alone, pushing him to declare himself monstrous. A declaration of monstrosity as part of the image of a rapper is not wholly unique or exclusive to Kanye West. The image that the word “monster” produces in the imagination of rap fans is that of a creature that is larger than life, cannot be killed or even stopped, and can destroy everything in its path. With that imagery it is easy to understand why the term “monster” exists as a persona that Kanye Senior Seminar, Fall 2016 13 would adopt at this point in his career, when he is seemingly unstop- pable. However, when examining the events that led him to assertion of the monstrous, there is perhaps a more psychological meaning than simply being boisterous. In 1923, German psychologist-philosopher Sigmund Freud pub- lished a provocative theory termed The Ego and the Id, suggesting a theory of human psychology that altered the way Western culture perceives human identity. According to his theory, the ego is the part of our minds that “prevents us from acting on our basic urges (created by the id), but also works to achieve a balance with our moral and idealistic standards (created by the superego)” (Cherry). Another way of looking at it is that the ego is simply the self as differentiated with another self or the world. Freud theorized that the ego balanced an id and a superego, equally important parts of the human psyche. Every person possesses an id, the innate self out of which springs the wants and urges that we have from childhood. The superego, in turn, is the portion of the self that engages social norms, accepts rules and expectations adopted from our families or social and cultural environments. It is the responsibil- ity of the ego to control these differentiating forces. While we have dark twisted fantasies in the id, social norms regulated by the superego declare these unacceptable, so we regulate these two forces through the ego.

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